It's brown, it's old, and it's made of real leather. It's the purse that won't stay lost. A small brown money and credit-card holding receptacle, it was given to me when I mislaid the last one.
The last one was a multi-pocketed number covered in coloured spots, a purse so ambitious it jumped at the chance at being lost. It couldn't wait to fall out of my bag or to be left in a taxi or a train. And once I had lost it, I knew it was never coming back.
You see, spotty purse wasn't interested in being found. Being found wasn't in its make-up. My make-up bag wants to be lost too. They always do. Make-up bags love the idea of me having to replace my Touche Éclat a few times a year instead of making it last forever. This brown thing, though? It just keeps coming back to me, like a boomerang. The purse that won't stay lost.
Real Leather. Made in Ireland. Mottled leather, so you would think its owner is a darling old lady who scrabbles for change while holding up the supermarket queue, whereas in fact she's a hassled thirty-something who scrabbles for change while holding up the supermarket queue. It's not pretty, this purse. It's not ugly either. It's just plain and practical and it doesn't like being lost.
The first time I had an inkling of this was a few months ago when I was browsing in the children's section of a bookshop on Grafton Street. I put the brown purse down on one of those comfy stools that bookshops seem to install only in children's sections. I had been holding the purse so I wouldn't have to dig around like a fool in my handbag when I went to pay. In the end I didn't buy anything; I just walked out. An hour later, when I went to see if I'd enough cash on me to pay for something in Fallon and Byrne I went scrambling in my handbag for the purse. And there it was. Gone.
(Can I just go off on a mini-tangent here about Fallon and Byrne, the New York-style grocery store on Exchequer Street, Dublin? I'm spending a worrying amount of time there lately. The food is gorgeous and great value, the smoothies are top-notch and the place is as bright and airy as you could wish for in the kind of weather we've been having. So thank you Mr and Mrs Fallon and Byrne.)
Anyway, there I was in Fallon and Byrne, and there was the small brown purse, gone. Retracing my steps is something I am forced to do around 20 times a day. I'm just not very good at it. This time I was better. Back to a shoe shop where I didn't buy any shoes and into a health food store where I didn't buy porridge oats, and then back into the bookshop. Up the lift to the children's section, where a woman with a child was just that minute picking the purse up from the comfy stool, ready to hand it in to the cash desk. "That's my purse," I said, a little out of breath, even though I'd only come up in the lift. "Oh," she said. "I was expecting a little old lady . . . "
Not long after that, brown purse and I were in a taxi going to work. It was later, when I went out to get a cup of coffee that I found her gone. I didn't trust her yet. I thought she would stay lost and so I rang the bank to cancel all my cards. A few minutes after I put the phone down the taxi driver rang me, said he read the column and knew where to find me. Within a few hours he had dropped brown purse into the office. (Thank you kind taxi-driver.)
When I left her on a bus the other day, a 46A, it was the oddest feeling. I stood on Dawson Street watching the bus drive away with my brown purse on it. By this stage, after all that had happened, I was confident that when I rang the controller at Donnybrook bus garage, he'd talk to the driver and the brown purse would be delivered back to me within minutes.
But the controller said that the driver told him that the brown purse was nowhere to be found. So it didn't happen that way. Instead, it happened this way.
A few hours later, sitting at my desk I was just wondering whether I should give up on the brown purse and call the bank when the phone rang. A Spanish man who had been on the 46A had found it and returned the purse to the bank that coincidentally was a 30-second walk from where I was sitting. A few minutes later I had the brown purse back. (Gracias, persona española buena.)
The poet Elisabeth Bishop was right when she wrote "the art of losing isn't hard to master". But it's lovely when some things just won't stay lost.